Month: November 2019

2. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.

17. Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory: (1) He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. (2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. (3) He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks. (4) He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. (5) He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered by sovereign.

2. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.

19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral law? (2) Which of the two generals has most ability? (3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth? (4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced? (5) Which army is stronger? (6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained? (7) In which army is there the greater constancy both in reward and punishment?

The center of the political earth had shifted. And if, since the war, European diplomacy has employed all the resources of its wisdom and experience to discover and act upon the susceptibilities and weaknesses of this new power, for any advantage, that is only what we might have expected. The debts of course. What were the debts but a bitter reminder of Europe’s lost attribute?

One of the consequences of settling with the debtor countries on the capacity of each on to pay, not on the written contract, was that in negotiating their agreements they made of course in every case a statement of poverty. It would be only human. They were trading.

On that basis of calculation you could say that Great Britain settled for eighty cents on the dollar, France for fifty cents and Italy for twenty-six cents.

The settlements were criticized, by some on the ground that they were too lenient, by others on the ground that they were too hard, and by others on the ground that they were unequal. The cancellationists were most vocal, saying the settlements were too hard.

When we began to send man power into allied countries–no, we did not charge for that. We were charged for it.

We were charged for moving American soldiers across the sea in British ships; we bought pounds sterling with dollars and paid cash for that British service. We were charged port dues for landing ships in French harbors–ships bearing our own munitions and supplies; we bought French francs with dollars and paid cash for the right to enter.

“In no circumstances,” said Lord Balfour, “do we propose to ask more from our debtors than is necessary to pay our creditors, and while we do not ask for more, all will admit that we can hardly be content with less, for it should not be forgotten, though it sometimes is, that our liabilities were incurred for others, not for ourselves.”